Microsoft Doesn’t Need a Name for Its User Interface

Do we really need more names for this? Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Microsoft is saying goodbye to its “Metro” branding. For the past year, the company and the media have talked about Metro in reference to Microsoft’s fresh, clean, tile-based user interface featured in products like Windows Phone, Windows 8, Office 2013, Outlook.com and more. But now, due to trademark issues surrounding the Metro name, Microsoft is looking for a replacement.

But it doesn’t matter what Microsoft calls its user interface. In fact, the UI shouldn’t have a name at all.

Giving a UI design a name might have made sense when Microsoft first showed off the drastically different design in Windows 8. The bright-colored tiles were a huge shift away from Windows’ traditional desktop look. It made it easier to explain that Windows was borrowing the Windows Phone 7 “Metro” design language, for a more cohesive experience across devices. But now that Microsoft has shown the world its new user interface, it’s time to put the focus back on the actual products.

Now that all of the major Microsoft products — Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, and Office — share the same design language, there’s no need to confuse people with jargon. Putting a name to a user interface makes sense internally, but when it comes to consumers it just gets murky. What is Metro? Is it something I need to buy? Do I have it right now? Even the media has constantly needed to describe and re-describe what Metro means in order to prevent further confusion (see above).

Microsoft probably didn’t plan for this. And the company, which has been notoriously bad at naming products, did have a great name in Metro. But now could be the perfect time for Microsoft to really focus on highlighting its upcoming products instead. If Windows 7 proves anything, very few people will actually be talking about the user interface brand, so it just adds to the deluge of names. How often do you hear people talking about their “Aero desktop experience“?

Microsoft has some amazing and unique products lined up, and getting caught up in naming something as abstract as a design language will take away from that. Apple has never branded its design language (at least externally). It simply tries to get customers to think in terms of its products. For consumers, that makes more sense.

With Microsoft’s new design language already pervasive in the majority of the company’s big products, there’s no need for a name. While I was a fan of saying “Metro” — that’s just a fun word to say — it’s time to let go and not try to replace it with anything else. It’s time for people to just be able to say, that’s Windows. That’s Windows Phone. That’s Microsoft.